flying fingers

Well, my holiday is over, my holiday has begun, and I am sorry for those scrambling to find gifts before next Tuesday. So what am I doing?

Holiday knitting (and crochet).

I finally made the Polar Bear Cub Hat! I think it’s adorable as can be. If you knit with plush yarn (yucks) I do not suggest sewing on parts with the same yarn. I haven’t yet heard if it fits since L’s mum kept my prototype, but we’ll see. The yarn is Peter Pan Darling in White. I held two strands together and used a 6mm crochet hook. I had about 12″ leftover after the sewing on of the ears. One is slighly off and there was no way I was able to undo it. I really don’t like plush yarns, but it is definitely soft as anything.

A coworker gave me a holiday gift, and she thought to give it early because of Chanukah. I thought this was a sweet surprise. In thanks, I knit her Amy King’s “Ripple Basket Liner” found in The Knitter’s Book of Yarn. I used less than one ball of Lion Kitchen Cotton in Sage. This knit up incredibly fast .. it’s knit center-out so there is no purling. :) I hope she’ll like it.

Next up, R bought his mum a new cell and I offered to knit him a cozy for it. He wanted to buy her a sewing machine but she asked for the phone. Considering how old hers is, we agreed this would be a smart gift. He requested red “with some white”. I chose the diamond pattern in More Sensational Knitted Socks and this is my first real attempt at two-colour knitting and I think it turned out wonderfully. It is knit in once piece from the bottom up, constructed quite similar to how I do socks. My floats are quite loose and he likes it. We decided to add a tether because “she looses everything”.. I’ve not been happy with the tethers I’ve seen. Sometimes I want it short, sometimes I want it a bit longer. So I made this one. Just inside at the base of the cord is a ring for the “short tether”. On the i-cord is another jumpring which floats and will wrap around whatever for a longer tether cord. I hope that she likes both the cozy and the new phone.

The Firm had their holiday dinner on Monday and I wanted a new hat to wear. Enter one skein of Kraemer Yarns Mauch Chunky in Portabello, a bunch of 5mm circs, and Rachel Iufer’s Robin’s Egg Blue Hat. I didn’t quite get done until after the first course was served but I finished it. I didn’t wear it during dinner and haven’t worn it in the office as it’s much too casual for my environment. It’s also a bit smaller than I’d like. I’m torn between ripping it and knitting a softer-lining with retractable ear flaps. This is a really great hat and it’s true that it’s a fast knit. I had cast on at 6:30am and by 6pm I had a hat, not to mention had worked a long day!

This morning I finished the second heel of the jaywalkers and am now flying up the leg. . It’s amazing how much tighter my stitches are for the leg than the foot. It’s a bit frustrating but we’ll see how they come out. They may be a gift but if they’re too wonky, I’ll keep them.

I have done a small (very small) bit of spindle spinning. I’ve been playing too much with Ravelry and knitting those holiday gifts (I have one more to go, which I need to think about before I cast on, technically I need it for 2008-01-02). Yesterday I received API access to Ravelry and started to add those new nifty progress bars on the sidebar (slowly I’m cleaning up this site). I need to clean up the css, but as I’ve been fighting lots of css lately, I’m going to let it think about itself first. Sometimes I can be very stupid when it comes to configuring technology (3 hours yesterday, we won’t talk about my idiotic behaviour today). I saw Squid and Squidette in Knitty City this afternoon. It was a pleasant surprise and wonderful to see Pearl’s store packed.

• Category: handmade
• Tag: friends, knit, spin